Internet Sensation
A legion of fans follow Ken Carson’s every move thanks to his alliance with Playboi Carti. The benefits are aplenty, but the Atlanta native is climbing to new heights on his own.
Words: Grant Rindner
Editor’s Note: This story appears in the Summer 2024 issue of XXL Magazine, on stands now.
In the span of a few years, Ken Carson has cultivated the kind of engaged, young fan base that A&Rs and record executives spend hours in meetings trying to drum up for their artists. The Atlanta-born rapper signed with Playboi Carti’s Opium record label in 2020. Carson released his Boy Barbie EP the same year, then produced “Beno!” from Carti’s critical hit Whole Lotta Red, and scored one of his first crossover tracks with “Yale.”
Carson’s status as a torch bearer for the gleefully destructive rage rap sound has made him a genuine youth icon. The subreddit on Reddit dedicated to the rapper boasts 45,000 members, easily dwarfing the subreddits of Hot 100 mainstays like Lil Durk, Gunna and 21 Savage. Though not a catch-all metric of success, it makes something very clear: Ken Carson fans don’t just love listening to Ken Carson; they really want to talk about Ken Carson, share memes of Ken Carson and speculate about what’s next for Ken Carson. It’s a rabid level of fascination and engagement, clearly in the mold of his mentor Carti’s fan base. However, Carson has worked diligently over his career to establish himself as more than just an apostle of the baby-voiced rhymer.
Though just 24, Carson has been around Atlanta’s key hip-hop players since he was a teenager. His childhood best friend was producer Lil88, nephew of 808 Mafia member TM88. Once Ken, born Kenyatta Frazier, learned about the connection, he began spending time with the influential producer collective and says that for a moment in 2017, he even lived with Young Thug. At the time, Carson admits, “F**k no, I wasn’t making sh*t,” but shares that watching artists like Thug and Carti record was extremely valuable to him.
“That’s how you learn, though,” he explains. “That’s how I learned, personally. I got to see it, ‘Oh, I can do that.’ Try it; it worked. Keep trying.”
While that early face time with Thug, Carti and 808 Mafia could point to an Almost Famous-style, superstar-studded origin story, Carson’s love for music came in the most relatable way. Waking up early before school, he’d watch AMTV, learning about artists like Green Day, The All-American Rejects and Red Hot Chili Peppers. He actually served as tour support for the latter group on three dates in late May and early June of this year.
The shows represented a significant risk for Ken, as he was rapping in massive venues in front of an unfamiliar audience, and reactions were a mix of confusion and excitement before and after he performed. These sets didn’t exactly reflect the raucous full crowd mosh pit effect that his solo sets have. Still, he recognizes the importance of broadening his audience and learning to thrive in different performance environments. The decision was a no-brainer for Carson, who answered, “Who wouldn’t?” when asked about joining the tour.
If hip-hop were a high school, Carson would be one of those kids who went to the popular parties, but sometimes spent lunch alone. He’s an understated case study. If someone thinks too hard about why Ken Carson is cool, they’re missing the point.
Despite his easygoing, nonplussed demeanor, Carson takes his live show seriously. Between the Chili Peppers slots, summer festivals and his own run of shows across the U.S. and Europe for the Chaos World Tour, Carson is spending nearly all of 2024 on the road. He stresses the importance of staying in cardio shape, noting how his sets have changed from those early days as an unknown.
“At first, the shows were about 15 minutes, then it got up to 45,” he recalls. “Now it’s 45, and you might get an hour and 10 [minutes]. You got to be in shape for that.”
Carson has released three projects through Opium so far: Project X, X and A Great Chaos. The latter two were dropped in partnership with Interscope Records. A Great Chaos debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard 200 in 2023, and also has performed well in Europe and Canada. Brandon Brown, former Vice President of A&R at Interscope Records, served as the A&R for that album and signed Ken to the label.
“I feel like he’s grown sonically, and some of the subject matter and songs has changed,” Brown says about Ken. “He is talking about different experiences, different phases of things he’s experiencing now, from pre-signing to being signed and more famous. He’s comfortable in his new scheme as a successful artist.”
Both charting and streaming success have led fans to come out in droves for Ken’s shows. The proof is in the sold-out dates. “He’s done a great job of building his own community,” Brown continues. “You might see other artists with Billboard [hits] or half a billion streams on a song, but can those same people get real people to come out and sell out a venue? Ken can.”
Carson is undeniably a post-Carti artist. His beats often seem sampled from badly damaged PlayStation 2 discs, his lyrics are usually secondary to memorable ad-libs, and his delivery is less about matching the raucous nature of his instrumentals than it is contrasting against them.
The rhymer isn’t the kind of artist who will brag about his creative process, but he has a wry answer when asked about the growth shown between his three projects so far. “I go to the studio every night,” he says. “It would be a f**king shame to go to the studio for three to four years straight and drop three times, and you never get better within those three times. That would just be a waste of time.”
Ken seems to draw more directly from the 2010’s Atlanta rap lineage (last year’s “Me N My Kup” sounds like a spiritual sequel to Young Thug’s 1017 Thug mixtape) than some of the other Opium artists, with his woozy melodies and fewer forays into the world of spooky voices.
He’s had a meteoric ascent in the three years since releasing Project X in 2021, but he doesn’t show any signs of whiplash or even surprise. The one moment that he does admit to being awed by? Last November, when his collaboration with musical polymath 070 Shake came out. “That’s something I want to tell my younger self like, ‘Boy, you got a song with 070 Shake,’” he remembers fondly.
While Opium’s talent roster hails almost exclusively from Atlanta—Carson, Carti, Destroy Lonely and the duo Homixide Gang all grew up in the southern rap mecca—they’ve carved out an alternate niche for themselves. The music of Opium feels respectful to the city’s hip-hop lineage and present-day influence, but less geographically bound. Carson shows his love of Atlanta rap in his tunes, but even his sound feels more informed by the diffusion of rap online.
“It’s a lot of muthaf**kas from Atlanta who are rappers, but it’s a lot of muthaf**kas from Atlanta who are rappers who sound exactly the same,” Carson expresses. “So, us just
[venturing] off as a whole is a plus.”
His ascent from underground favorite to burgeoning mainstream star has been further cemented with the crossover success of his single “Overseas,” Carson’s first single to appear on the Billboard Hot 100. It debuted at No. 79 this past April. That track, with its Heath Ledger Joker-inspired cover art, shimmering beat and subtle melody, is a fitting introduction to the world of Ken Carson. The rapper says he didn’t necessarily sense that the song would have this impact, but he did feel that the circumstances around it were ideal.
“Just like everything, it’s perfect timing,” he insists. “I think I dropped it on my birthday. When I drop music, I don’t really anticipate anything. So, everything is a plus, really. I’m not thinking about numbers or something. If I love a song enough, it’ll come out.”
“Overseas” is coproduced by Lucian, an Atlanta-based beatmaker, and is one of Ken Carson’s most frequent collaborators, who also worked on Lil Yachty’s meme sensation “Poland” and tracks for Carti, Yeat and Destroy Lonely. The producer cites “Jennifer’s Body” from A Great Chaos as the archetypal Lucian-Ken Carson collaboration and says that Carson’s commitment to “pushing his sound” is why their creative relationship has remained so fruitful.
For “Overseas,” Lucian details how the instrumental instantly connected with Carson, and before Lucian and the other producers knew it, the star of the show had an idea that had been hashed out and was ready to record.
“He hears the beat [and] he’ll instantly know what to do on it,” Lucian describes of Ken. “One take, he’ll just go in the booth, come out in 20 minutes. He is a perfectionist. He definitely takes his time, but he knows what he’s doing.”
The Dark Knight-inspired Joker scars on Carson’s visage for the “Overseas” single artwork is just the latest and most overt symbol of the rapper’s love for cinema’s gory and grim. The music videos from A Great Chaos often recall the eerie, lo-fi aesthetic of another recent Batman villain: Paul Dano’s Riddler in the 2022 franchise reboot. Don’t tell the MC that, though; he’s previously expressed his dislike for Matt Reeves’ movie in the media. Carson has referenced Rob Zombie in his music videos, used the cult classic film Jennifer’s Body as inspiration for his last album’s best song, and has repeatedly called the maximalist crime biopic The Devil’s Double his favorite film.
Lucian says their studio sessions often feature scary movies playing in the background to help create a mood. It’s easy to imagine Ken Carson curating a soundtrack for a major studio thriller or horror movie in the vein of what Kendrick Lamar did with Black Panther or Future did with Superfly. (“I want to do all that,” Ken insists. “All that.”)
When asked what resonates so hard about these genre films in particular, Carson details, “The fact that it’s not real and it looks real,” with a sense of frustration and envy. Hip-hop, after all, has never been allowed the same artistic license as film, literature and even some other musical genres. Though their lyrical content differs from that of the horrorcore rappers who made the subgenre famous in the 1990s, Ken Carson and Opium can be clearly traced to that lineage.
Like many rock stars whose aesthetic he has drawn inspiration from, Carson has faced notable and concerning legal trouble throughout his rise. In 2021, he was arrested and charged with battery (domestic violence) in Florida and had an altercation with police
at a Lil Uzi Vert show in 2023. The battery case was closed a month after the incident. (This is an unfortunate through line with Opium, as Destroy Lonely was reportedly arrested for simple battery last year, and Carti has been arrested for felony assault, reckless driving and drug possession at different times during his career.)
“Yeah, of course,” Carson says about moving differently after learning from his own experiences. “I’m sure everybody is trying to stay out of trouble.” When asked a follow-up question about an online document indicating that the 2021 case was dropped, Carson’s PR stepped in to move along with the interview.
Compared to Playboi Carti, Ken Carson scans as more of an everyman, less enigmatic, and more aligned with the average rap-loving 24-year-old. He’s aware of the mysterious aura that Opium has cultivated, really coming from the head of the snake. But Carson insists that isn’t a calculated move to breed mystery; it’s a product of the fact that the tight-knit cohort is doing the work. Based on his own schedule, which includes the deluxe edition of A Great Chaos he dropped in July and the aforementioned grueling run of shows, he’s on a truly non-stop pace.
“You wouldn’t want us to be posting on Instagram all day, [on] Twitter all day,” Carson maintains. “That’s not working. What are you doing? Go in the studio.”
Read the stories on the ongoing scamming and fraud plaguing hip-hop‘s interview in the Freshman issue, on newsstands now. In addition to interviews with the 2024 Freshman Class and producer Southside, there are also conversations with Sexyy Red, Mustard, Ski Mask The Slump God, Rubi Rose, Ken Carson, Ghostface Killah, Lola Brooke and more, plus, a look back at what the 2023 XXL Freshman Class has been doing. Also, there are stories on the ongoing scamming and fraud plaguing hip-hop and how podcasters and streamers are playing a major role in rap beef. The issue is on sale here, along with some exclusive Freshman merch.